GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X should be 40% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a bit (approximately 4%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (67%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.